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Published: January 29th 2007
We left Ko Pha Ngan by ferry. That left us in Surat Thani on the mainland and from there we caught a train south and across the Malaysian border to Butterworth. The only reason to stop in Butterworth is for a train connection or to take the boat across to nearby Georgetown. There was nothing of much interest here except a very important looking tower.. see picture. We were only here for the train connection and arrived into Kuala Lumpur (KL as everyone calls it) early the following morning.
We must have looked very lost as we were immediately asked by locals if we needed help and were told KL was just like New York and not the real Malaysia at all! We found our hostel and spent two nights in the city, mostly admiring the impressive buildings and hanging around the hostel at night. The mix of Malay, Chinese and Indian populations makes it a city with huge variety in everything - appearance of people, religion, dress, architecture and traditions. We visited the national mosque and met a strange character who showed us around the mosque and tried to convert us to Islam (maybe it was my beard!). The
whole situation got even stranger when he told us 9/11 was a conspiracy drawn up by the American government. We left pretty soon after that!
On the same day we visited the old train station, a history museum and the Petronas towers, formerly the highest building in the world. I thought the most interesting thing about the Petronas building was the fact that each tower was built by a separate construction company. It was done this way so that both were competing to finish construction first. I'm pretty sure the LUAS tram lines in Dublin weren't built that way!
The next day we hit the Kuala Lumpur tower, 4th highest telecoms tower in the world. which gave us great views of the city including the Petronas towers.
The following day we took a coach to the seaside town of Melaka. The coach was the most luxurious bus either of us had ever been on. The seats were like armchairs, three in a row across the width of the bus aswell as working aircon. Not what we were expecting to find in Malaysia, but a nice surprise. We only spent one night in Melaka. It was a small
enough town with a nice Christian Church town square and a beautiful Chinatown. It's a stopoff on the way to Sumatra and that's where we were headed next.
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